A Fortune for Kregen Page 10

  I looked at Hunch and Nodgen and we three crept into a corner by the outer gate, out of the way of all those dangerous hooves and claws. A number of slaves were not so fortunate — or not so smartly craven — and were trampled to death.

  Just what the hell would have happened then nobody could say. Over the inner portals a light bloomed, a pale corpse-green lych-light. Against it the shape of a woman showed, her hair a halo of translucent silver, her face in shadow. She lifted her arms and a voice, magnified artificially, echoed over the expedition.

  “Listen to me, travelers, and be apprised.”

  The silence dropped as a stone drops down a well.

  “Do you all enter here of your own free will?”

  No single person took up the shout. A chorus spurted up at once, men and women shrieking in their fear. “Yes! Yes!”

  Even as the affirmative uproar went on, I fancied that Prince Nedfar, and Lobur the Dagger, for two, would not be shouting thus.

  But the clamor continued.

  “Let there be no mistake. You enter here to escape the riders who await you outside with steel and fire.

  It is of your own free will and on your own ibs. Let it be so written.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” the mob shrieked.

  “By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable!” Tarkshur lashed his zorca to still the animal. His lowering face filled with fury. “This is a nonsense! It is all a trick!”

  The nearest people turned to look at him. They saw his imperious manner, his impatient gestures, they saw all the alive dominance of him in his black armor. He pointed at the open gate through which we had all crowded to safety.

  “There is no danger. The swarthriders are gone! Roko,” he bellowed at one of his Kataki mercenaries,

  “ride out and show these cowardly fools.”

  Obediently the Kataki, Roko, turned his zorca and rode back out through the opening. Now many faces turned in the last of the light to watch. Tarkshur spurred across.

  Practically no time passed.

  Roko’s zorca sprang back through the opening. His head was up and his spiral horn was broken.

  Roko sat, clamped into the saddle, his tail wrapped around the zorca’s body like a second girth.

  Through Roko’s neck above the gilt rim of his iron corselet a long barbed arrow stuck wickedly. Flaming rags wrapped about the arrow burned up into his predatory Kataki face.

  The silver-haired woman’s voice keened out, chillingly.

  “In fire and steel will you all die outside this Moder.”

  “Take us in! Take us in!” The screams pitched up into frenzy. Men were beating at the closed far doors.

  “Of your own free will?”

  I was looking at Tarkshur the Lash. He looked sullen, vicious, crafty. There was no fear there. He shouted with the rest.

  “Yes, yes! Of our own free will!”

  The shrieking mob clamored to be allowed in — of their own free will. The suns sank, shafting ruby and emerald fires in brilliant dying sparkles against an inscription deeply incised in the rock above the gateway. The woman lowered her arms.

  Slowly, the gates opened.

  Chapter Ten

  Down the Moder

  “I, for one,” declared Nodgen, spitting, “say I do not enter this place of my own free will.”

  “Nor me,” said Hunch.

  We were moving forward with the rabble all jostling and pushing to get through the inner door before the swarthriders roared in to shaft the laggards. It seemed important to me to say aloud that I, too, did not enter here of my own free will.

  I said it.

  We shuffled along, as always caring for the draught animals and beasts of burden in our care. Beyond the arched gateway stretched a wide area, shadowed with dappled trees and vines, with stone-flagged squares upon the ground, and the hint of stone-built stalls at either side. Here we halted, looking about, seeing yet another gate in the far wall.

  We were simply slaves and so at intemperately bellowed orders fruitfully interlarded with that vile word

  “Grak!” we set about making camp, caring for the animals, preparing food for our masters. These great ones went a way apart and conferred together. There were nine expeditions in the greater expedition, nine supreme great ones to talk, one to the other as they pleased.

  Nine is the sacred and magical number on Kregen.

  Among the superb establishments of these masterful folk with their remudas of zorcas and totrixes and swarths, their fine coaches, their wagons and strings of pack animals, their multitude of slaves, it amused me greatly that old Deb-Lu-Quienyin with his preysany to ride, his pack calsany and his little Och slave, must be accepted on terms equal to one of the nine principals.

  Against the high glitter of the stars the overreaching mass of the hill lifted above us. The Moder appeared to be moving against the star-filled night, to lean and be ready to fall upon us. The slaves did not often look up.

  The hushed conference of the nine masters broke up. Tarkshur came strutting back to our camp and bellowed for Galid the Krevarr, the Jiktar of his five remaining paktuns. At least, I assumed they were mercenaries, although they might well be his retainers from his estates in unknown Klardimoin.

  What Tarkshur had to say was revealed to the slaves after we had all eaten. The meal was good — very good.

  Then we were paraded for the master.

  He came walking down toward us, and the Maiden with the Many Smiles shone down into the stone-walled area and illuminated the scene with her fuzzy pinkish light.

  He halted before the first in line, a shambling Rapa with a bent beak. To him, Tarkshur dealt a savage buffet in the midriff. The slave collapsed, puking. Tarkshur snorted his contempt and walked on to the next. This was Nodgen. Tarkshur struck him forcefully in the guts, and Nodgen grunted and reeled, and remained upright.

  “Him,” said Tarkshur.

  Galid and the other Katakis shepherded Nodgen the Brokelsh to one side.

  Along the rank Tarkshur went, striking each man. He chose nine who resisted his blow. Nine slaves, in their tattered old gray slave breechclouts, stood to one side. I was one of the nine.

  “Now get your heads down. Sleep. Rest. In the morning — we go up!”

  And, in the morning — we went up.

  Each superior master with his retainers had chosen nine slaves — excepting the old Wizard of Loh, of course. Up the stony path we trailed, toiling up as the suns brightened.

  Below us the panorama of the Humped Land spread out, hundreds of Moders rising like boils from the sunken plain.

  Each slave was burdened with a piled-up mass of impedimenta. I carried an enormous coil of rope, a few picks and shovels, twisted torches, and a sack of food. Also, around my shoulders on a leathern strap dangled half a dozen water bottles. It was a puffing old climb up, I can tell you.

  We were venturing into a — place — of gold and magic and it occurred to me to wonder who would return alive.

  Occasionally I caught a glimpse of Deb-Lu-Quienyin straggling on. He used a massive staff to assist him.

  Also, he had four new slaves and I guessed he had borrowed these from one of the other expeditions and my guess — proved right — was that they came with the compliments of Prince Nedfar.

  Much vegetation obscured our view but at last we came out to a cleared area at the top and saw a square-cut gateway leading into the base of the tower-pinnacled building crowning the Moder. The gates were of bronze-bound lenk and they were closed.

  It was daylight, with the twin suns shining; yet the light that grew in a niche above the gate shone forth brightly. Against the glow a woman’s figure showed — a woman with translucent golden hair. Her voice was deeper, mellower than her sister’s who guarded the lower portal.

  “You are welcome, travelers. Do you desire ingress?”

  The shouts of “aye” deafened.

  “Of your own free will?”

  “Aye!” and “Aye!”

  “Then ente
r, and fare you well.”

  The gates opened. We passed through. The moment the last person entered the hall beyond the gates, lit by torches, the gates slammed. Their closing rang a heavy and ominous clang as of prison bars upon our hearing.

  I, for one, knew we wouldn’t get out as easily as we had entered.

  The devil of being a slave, inter alia, is that you just don’t know what is going on.

  The hall in which we stood was coated thickly with dust. Many footprints showed in the dust — and while most of them pointed toward the double doors at the opposite side, four or five sets angled off to the corners — and without moving from where we stood we could see the dark and rusty stains on the stone floor at the abruptly terminated ends of the footprints.

  At the side of the door an inscription was incised.

  Useless for me to attempt to render it into an Earthly language. The problem lay in the language itself, a kind of punning play on words. The nine superior masters conferred, and now I could get a closer look at them all. Already I had met four of them. The flying man clashed his wings in frustration, trying to work out the riddle. The Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis gave a sarcastic and knowing chuckle, and expounded the riddle in a breath. The other three of the nine I did not know. One was a woman. One was the tall and upright swarth rider I had seen attempting to guard our flanks. The last was an enigma, being swathed in an enveloping cloak of emerald and ruby checks, diamonds of artful color that dazzled the eyes.

  “You have the right of it, San Yagno,” said Prince Nedfar. At this the sorcerer preened. He looked both ludicrous in his fussy and over-elaborate clothes, and decidedly impressive to those of a superstitious mind. He had powers, that was sooth; what those powers might be I fancied would be tested very soon.

  “Speak up, then, and do not keep us waiting,” growled Tarkshur.

  The sorcerer gathered himself, lifted his amulet of power he kept hung on a golden chain about his neck, and said, “The answer is there is no answer this side of the deepest of Cottmer’s Caverns.”

  His words echoed to silence, and the doors opened of themselves.

  We pushed through, the masters first, their retinues next, and we slaves last. For the slaves this order of precedence had suddenly become highly significant.

  The next chamber, lighted by torches, contained two doors.

  The obvious question was — which?

  From our breakfast I had filched a helping of mergem mixed with fat and bread and orange honey, rolled into a doughy ball. Now I took a piece of this from where it snugged between me and my breechclout, rolled it around my fingers for a time, then popped it into my mouth and began to chew. Let the great ones get on with solving their riddles of the right door. That was their business — not mine.

  A heated debate went on. In the end they solved whatever puzzle it was and they chose to take the left-hand door.

  I didn’t say, “You’ll be sorry!” in a singsong voice, for I didn’t know if they were right or wrong; but it would have been nice to understand a little more of what the hell was going on. We picked up our gear and trailed off through the left-hand doorway.

  Shouts warned us, otherwise we would have fallen.

  A steep stairway slanted down. The walls glistened with moisture and mica drops. The stairs were worn.

  So somebody had chosen the left-hand door and gone down here before. We descended. I began to suspect that the whole hill, the entire structure of the Moder, was honeycombed with a maze of corridors and tunnels and stairways and slopes up or down, a bewildering ants nest of a place.

  At the bottom three doors confronted us. I had enjoyed my piece of mergem and felt I might take an interest in whatever the puzzle might be. There was no puzzle. Each door was opened to reveal a long corridor beyond. The three corridors ran parallel.

  “The left-hand one again?” said Prince Nedfar.

  “I always prefer to stick to the right,” said this tall swarth-rider. He was full and fleshy, with a veined face, and his armor was trim and compact, surprising in so worldly a lord. He carried a small arsenal of weapons, in the true Kregan way, and his people were all well-equipped.

  “An eminently sensible system,” said Nedfar, and from where I was standing in the shuffling, goggling throng of slaves, his easy air of irony struck me as highly refreshing.

  The woman said something, and then the man who wanted to go right snapped out, “I shall go alone, then—”

  The way he offered no special marks of deference to the prince was immediately explained as the mysterious figure in the red and green checkered cloak spoke up.

  “Best not to split up too soon, kov. There is a long way to go yet.”

  “If the prize is at the end — I shall go,” said this kov.

  Well, with seventy-five slaves all milling about and shouldering their burdens, I was pushed aside. The retinues of the great ones closed up, further obscuring my view. When it was all sorted out we went traipsing along the center corridor.

  There were quite clearly other decisions that were made by the important people up front. We slaves tailed along in a long procession that wound through corridors and crossed chambers and penetrated the shadows, one after the other when the way was narrow, pushing on in a gaggle across the wider spaces.

  We went through open doorways following the one ahead and so had to make no heart-searching decisions. We halted at times, and then were called on, and so we knew that some one or other of the clever folk up front had solved another puzzle.

  A tough-looking Fristle eased up alongside of me as we passed through a corridor wide enough for two.

  His cat face showed bruise marks, and he had lost fur beside his ear.

  “I hope the master falls down a hole,” he said, companionably.

  He was not one of Tarkshur’s slaves.

  “Who is your master?”

  “Why, that Fristle-hating Kov Loriman — Kov Loriman the Hunter, they call him. And he hunts anything that moves.”

  He had to be the armored swarth-rider, and he had to be the Kov Loriman the Hunter against whom I had played Execution Jikaida. A few questions elicited these facts. Loriman was renowned for hunting; it was his craze. He had visited the island of Faol many times — only, not recently. Now he was on this expedition because he had heard rumors of gold and magic and gigantic monsters, and he was anxious to test himself and his swordarm against the most horrific monsters imaginable.

  “Well, dom,” I said to the Fristle. “You don’t have to go far on Kregen to find yourself a horrific monster.”

  “I agree, dom. But these ones of Moderdrin are special.”

  We were just passing an open door in the corridor as he spoke, and we both looked into the room beyond.

  The charred body of a slave lay in the doorway, headless, and his blood still smoked.

  “See?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Prince Tyfar

  Well, I mean — where on two worlds these day can you expect to stroll along and pick up gold just lying about without something getting in the way? And — magic as well?

  So there were monsters.

  Hunch gave me a queasy look.

  Nodgen rumbled that, by Belzid’s Belly, he wished he had his spear with him.

  Hitching up the coil of rope, which had an infuriating habit of slipping, I said, “I’d as lief have these chains off. They do not make for easy expeditioning.”

  “Galid the Krevarr has the key.”

  On we went until our way was halted by a press of slaves crowding back in the center of a wide and shadowed hall. Tall black drapes hung at intervals around the walls, and cressets lit the place fitfully. A monstrous stone idol reared up facing us, bloated, swag-bellied, fiery-eyed, and blocking the way ahead.

  Four tables arranged in the form of a cross stood near the center of the hall, and a chain hung suspended from shadows in the roof. Each table was covered with a series of squares, and each square was marked with a symbol. In addition, th
e squares were colored in diagonals, slanting lines of red, green and black.

  The slaves formed a jostling circle about the tables as the leaders contemplated the nature of this problem.

  “Judging by what has gone before,” observed Prince Nedfar, “it would seem that we are to select a combination of these squares, depress them, and then pull the chain.”

  “Ah, but,” said the fellow in the red and green checkered cloak. “If the combination is not the right one

  — what will pulling the chain bring?”

  We slaves shivered at this.

  “What do you suggest, Tyr Ungovich?” The woman spoke and I looked at her, able to see her more clearly than before. She wore a long white gown that looked incongruously out of place in these surroundings, and her yellow hair, which fell just short of her shoulders, was confined by a jeweled band.

  Her feet were clad in slippers. I shook my head at that. Her face — she had a high, clear face with a perfect skin of a dusky rose color, and with a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose I imagined must cause her acute embarrassment, quite needlessly. The habitual authority she held was delightfully softened by a natural charm. I could still think that, and she a slave owner and me a slave.

  At her back stood two Pachaks, clearly twins, and their faces bore the hard, dedicated, no-nonsense looks of hyr-paktuns who have given their honor in the nikobi code of allegiance into good hands. At their throats the golden glitter of the pakzhan proclaimed that they were hyr-paktuns, and conscious of the high dignity within the mercenary fraternity that position conferred upon them.

  “My lady?” said this Tyr Ungovich, and he did not lift the hood of his checkered cloak to speak.

  “It is to you we owe our safe arrival here,” said the flying man. He rustled his wings. “Your guidance has been invaluable, Tyr Ungovich—”

  Yagno, the sorcerer, pushed himself forward. “The answer appears a simple progression of symbols —